Learned Helplessness Summary

Martin Seligman: Learned Helplessness

Martin E. P. Seligman is the Leadership Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He teaches a course called Positive Psychology that studies character traits, positive emotions, and intuitions of humans. Seligman believes that Positive Psychology can make the world a better place if people are were aware of its benefits. Seligman's overall goal is to train other psychological professionals about the importance of his positive psychological theory. His thought is to train these individuals to become Positive Psychologists who will focus on clients who are experiencing unhappiness and lack of achievement in their lives. This is typically found in people who have disorders such as depression. It is the job of a Positive Psychologist to teach their …show more content…
The dog in group 2 during the experiment had behaviors that resembled a clinically depressed human being. Learned Hopelessness has expresses similar characteristics to depression. First there was an emotional disturbance (electric shock). This triggered a reluctance to imitate actions and lead to feelings of hopelessness and sadness. This group also suffered cognitive deficits that inhibited learning and problem-solving skills. This lead to the dog to believe that his own hopelessness was to blame for this treatment and could do nothing to stop it.

This research can be applied into the field of psychology because it represents a different aspect of a person's cognitive thinking that develop during human experiences in our society. Learned Hopelessness is one's belief in their global and permanent incompetence. This can develop from a wide variety of social situations such as: being involved in an emotionally abusive relationship, domestic violence, repeated failure in school, child abuse, neglect,